Stage 1: Tank Recolor and Extraction Guide

I decided to make this guide to help many players who are thinking about starting their own recoloring tank projects.. This is the first step in that process.. Locating and extracting the tank files you will need to move into recoloring.

It took me awhile to figure this out after relentless searching of the forums, making posts of my own on how to go about finding the files that are needed, what is needed to extract, Where to put them once I found them, what folder did they go into, etc. So I hope this step by step guide will help those in much need of help of figuring this process out.

What you will need for this process

7Zip or Winrar. This is what is used to extract the files from the .pkg files located in the WoT Game directory.

​MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR Res_Mod FOLDER FIRST!

Click on the show spoiler button, follow the steps, and you will starting the first important process of learning how to extract and locate the tank files you will need to for your own recoloring tank projects. ENJOY!

Spoiler

Pick a couple different tanks you think ya might want to start recoloring in your garage or from the Tech tree. Some tanks have ALOT more parts then others.

You can paste into another temporary location of your choice Just Remember where and keep that window open as well. Yes, it will be a bit cluttered on your computer screen till ya get the hang of it to do all of this quickly.

The above step is temporary, you WILL have to copy and paste your vehicle folder into the game folder eventually to see your work and start working with editing.

Now open your vehicle folder. There are ALOT of files and a few Folders. We are only interested the ones we will be editing.

On your window's main task bar. Select View and select Medium – Large to see the actual DDS Images.

We will only be Interested in the .DDS images that end with _01_AM.DDS for now for basic editing.

These will be the ones that should look similar to the tank you want to recolor. Do NOT change, rename, delete any of the remaining folders for now.

WHEN you are ready to start Editing your tank, do the following:

Open where you have temporarily stored your Tank folder.

Right click the TANK folder and choose Copy

Reopen your WoT game folder (RULE 2)

Navigate to: World_of_Tanks\res_mods\0.9.22.0.1\vehicles\”country of your tank. As per example above

For now we can leave any and all files and folders that came with the extraction:

UNLESS you have any preinstalled mods that may have already created other files and or folders pertaining to your tank.

Then you will need to do one of the following

Either select replace all or

do not overwrite. Which should only place the .DDS files into that folder

Manually copy and paste ONLYthe _AM.DDS files

I am also currently working a couple of recoloring guide for Photoshop CC 2015. A how to for beginners quick and basic recolor, and a more in depth detailed guide as well. which will be for SD Clients for now. HD Client tank skins will also work the same, but will require a few changes in saving, sizing etc. Which I will be linking from this post as

I decided to make this guide to help many players who are thinking about starting their own recoloring tank projects.. This is the first step in that process.. Locating and extracting the tank files you will need to move into recoloring.

It took me awhile to figure this out after relentless searching of the forums, making posts of my own on how to go about finding the files that are needed, what is needed to extract, Where to put them once I found them, what folder did they go into, etc. So I hope this step by step guide will help those in much need of help of figuring this process out.

What you will need for this process

7Zip or Winrar. This is what is used to extract the files from the .pkg files located in the WoT Game directory.

​MAKE A BACKUP COPY OF YOUR Res_Mod FOLDER FIRST!

Click on the show spoiler button, follow the steps, and you will starting the first important process of learning how to extract and locate the tank files you will need to for your own recoloring tank projects. ENJOY!

Spoiler

Pick a couple different tanks you think ya might want to start recoloring in your garage or from the Tech tree. Some tanks have ALOT more parts then others.

You can paste into another temporary location of your choice Just Remember where and keep that window open as well. Yes, it will be a bit cluttered on your computer screen till ya get the hang of it to do all of this quickly.

The above step is temporary, you WILL have to copy and paste your vehicle folder into the game folder eventually to see your work and start working with editing.

Now open your vehicle folder. There are ALOT of files and a few Folders. We are only interested the ones we will be editing.

On your window's main task bar. Select View and select Medium – Large to see the actual DDS Images.

We will only be Interested in the .DDS images that end with _01_AM.DDS for now for basic editing.

These will be the ones that should look similar to the tank you want to recolor. Do NOT change, rename, delete any of the remaining folders for now.

WHEN you are ready to start Editing your tank, do the following:

Open where you have temporarily stored your Tank folder.

Right click the TANK folder and choose Copy

Reopen your WoT game folder (RULE 2)

Navigate to: World_of_Tanks\res_mods\0.9.22.0.1\vehicles\”country of your tank. As per example above

For now we can leave any and all files and folders that came with the extraction:

UNLESS you have any preinstalled mods that may have already created other files and or folders pertaining to your tank.

Then you will need to do one of the following

Either select replace all or

do not overwrite. Which should only place the .DDS files into that folder

Manually copy and paste ONLYthe _AM.DDS files

I am also currently working a couple of recoloring guide for Photoshop CC 2015. A how to for beginners quick and basic recolor, and a more in depth detailed guide as well. which will be for SD Clients for now. HD Client tank skins will also work the same, but will require a few changes in saving, sizing etc. Which I will be linking from this post as

Stage 2 Photoshop recoloring guide coming soon!

​I hope that you all will find this SUPER informative and helpful. If I have missed anything on this, please feel free to reply with any additional information, links, etc.

This I do not yet know how to do.. Haven't tried nor really searched on how to do this, but you are more then welcome to search the forums here, but you will most likely find better results that are more up to date on the EU servers.

​Thank you very much for the Upvote.. I'm just happy to know that this information will help a lot of players wanting to get into the recoloring part of the game.